THIS is how to navigate in a forest - Forest Navigation done correctly 

As a Welsh bog-hopper, my navigation is all about avoiding the suck, keeping to high/dry ground and often following the rivers because I’ve got no choice. I’ve done so much wading icy “streams” that have become torrents due to heavy rainfall, that I always expect the worst. Felled sections can sometimes be even harder going, unless you’re lucky enough to find the caterpillar tracks the loggers have surfaced with branches. A forest mile on the map for me is often three miles on the ground. Keep up the great work. I’m loving your videos.

Your "studio" being a clearing in a forest is much more appreciated than a boring stale studio like most other content creators. I like your style very much.

I stupidly wondered off a path in a National Forest in Kentucky without a map or compass, and worse 1st time ever there. First time I had ever truly got lost. I was lost for about 20 minutes. What kept me from horribly getting in very deep dodo was I kept calm and before I walked off the path I looked up at the Sun. After about 15 minutes of a bit of wondering about I looked back up and from the position it was when I got started and at that point, I knew which way to go and when I walked back onto the path, I was about 5' away from where I first walked off it. True story.

One needs to keep in mind when walking in the forest that obstructions are often encountered and really must be avoided by going around. Marshes, bogs, lakes and other wet areas are the worst, but even fairly large hills will take their toll on you if you try to go straight over. Areas of thick brush or areas that have been logged with tops laying every which-way can be tough. What often looks like a straight line A-to-B on a map is often very, very different when you are out there walking it!

Long-time forest roamer here from the pacific Northwest of the USA, a region where Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, and Lodgepole pine (plantation species of the Keidler forest) grow natively. I agree with your take on forest navigation. It's a lot about interpreting map features and topography, and rough-and-ready bearings. And one frequently doesn't know exactly where one is. Which is not the same thing as being lost, I should note. One point I occasionally make to the trail-dependent, is that most trail-walkers don't know exactly where they are either, but they have an algorithm (following the trail) for getting to a known destination. So they're not lost, unless they lose the trail. Similarly, if I preserve general orientation in the woods and know that If I keep going in a given direction, I will eventually emerge at a known or identifiable spot, I am not lost, even if I am unsure within a kilometer of where I am. I applaud you for being invested in map and compass usage rather than a GPS device, or a mobile phone screen. It's more skill-demanding, sure, but it's much more robust. And I do believe also that over time it aids in developing terrain intuition, a "mental map", so that one does not need to consult map or compass often, or even at all in familiar terrain. And I think that's a good objective to work towards. Fiddle-faddling around with the map and compass takes time and breaks the rhythm. It's often much more satisfying to intuitively follow terrain. One should strive for efficiency, ease of movement, and that means navigating enough, but not too much. Use the heavyweight tools, such as precisely and slavishly following a compass bearing, only if you really need that precision. Most of the time, in woods or obstructed terrain, it'll just slow you down and drive you nuts. Follow the bearing sloppily, letting obstacles and terrain influence your path, and check once in a while to make sure you're not deviating too much. One thing I would note explicitly is that orientation is hardest in relatively featureless terrain with relatively poor visibility. In landscapes where the topography gives off strong signals, even if forested or with otherwise limited visibility (fog, dark) one can frequently rely just rely on topography without much reference to compass. One could say, in fact that the relative importance of compass vis-a-vis topographic map varies with terrain and visibility. Your instructional example relies on streams a lot as identifiable features. Over here in the US, even the best topographic maps we have, at 1:24000 scale, not infrequently get streams wrong, something I have learned the hard way. Mostly I think there is little field verification used on those maps, it is largely photographic interpretation, so a stream under unbroken tree cover may be missed or misplaced. Quite possibly UK ordnance survey map-making is more painstaking and better-funded. But the lesson still applies, I think, that one should learn what can be expected of one's maps. In large parts of Canada (British Columbia is what I know), the remoter and more interesting parts, naturally, the largest scale available is 1:50000, which takes a bit of getting used to. One striking and interesting and near-universal phenomenon which you do not mention is what I like to call (with apologies to Kenneth Grahame) "the terror of the wild wood". Being in trailless woods, particularly in situations of obstructed visibility (head-high brush, dark) has the capacity to really freak people out. It's built in, I think: we are visual creatures, and who knows what might be lurking out there? Bears? Tigers? Woozles? It is all very well for the rational mind to point out that there are no free-roaming bears, tigers, or woozles in the UK, the older and more primitive parts of our minds are still convinced that they are out there. The proper response to this fear is to condition it out through repeated exposure; over time one is as easy as Mr Darcy might be lounging in his deer park.

I was a Forward Observer attached to the Lite Infantry at Fr. Wainwright, AK, and so land navigation is what we did all the time. I loved it - those were the times I could go do my thing and be left alone without some overbearing jackass micromanaging or second guessing everything! As you know, when you get good at it then navigation in an unknown forest is as easy as following a highway map on a road trip. Practice practice practice!

Good video. You covered the most important stuff. These are what I know about orienteering: 1. Handrails. You covered it. 2. Aiming Off. Aiming for the left of a handrail, then turning right when you get there (or right, left). 3. Attack Points / Collecting Features. You covered that. 4. Point To Point Navigation. You covered. 5. Pacing, Estimated. I can hike 100 meters on flat smooth ground in 59 paces (118 steps). It could take a lot more for elevation and rough terrain, but never less. 6. Boxing. To go around a big obstacle, turn 90 degrees, go X paces, turn 90, go X, turn 90, X paces, turn 90. You are X paces from your starting point, and avoided the obstacle. 7. Safety Direction. When you leave your car / the road, take a bearing backwards toward the road. That's your safety direction. If all else fails, hopefully you have a working compass, and can bushwhack (off-trail) straight back to the road. One or two small button compasses are nice to have as backup, in case one of them breaks or gets lost.

My favorite forest navigation tip: Moss grows on the north side of the bodies of those who forgot their compass.

Sincere positivity, thats what the world needs

TO THE PRODUCER: This is the first video I have watched from this channel, but it was so good, so helpful, and nicely illustrated, that I will subscribe to learn more. I learned orienteering many years ago, and was taught in the military, but the tips in this video (so nicely illustrated by on the location footage) was VERY helpful along with the map visuals shown to correlate the features on the map with the scenes on the ground. Very helpful tips, I won’t forget. Thanks for producing the video! I look forward to learning more from you. Also I like how the video ended with a note about the relative size of forests in different locations. In the USA (and Canada) there can be very large forested areas, where someone can get lost easily, and many do. I also like how you showed the density of the forest too. Those make it very difficult or impossible to use typical “sight a distant object” techniques that are so often mentioned in books and lessons given by instructors. Your video shows how dense a forest can be, with undergrowth that prohibits any distant viewing, and makes hiking through it very difficult.

It’s been 45 years since I trudged through the woods. Inspiring wisdom. Thank you

Best bit about navigating cross country is stopping for a brew 👌 Nice and restorative and gives space for planning, reviewing.

Brilliant video sir, one of your best. How many times have I "doubted" my map and compass in favor of the terrain? Only because I was wanting it so, or too tired or very calorie depleted etc on the given day. I've seen others do it as well and fro me the crazy thing is, when my mind gets confused and starts to lie to me...I KNOW that it's lying but still find it's very hard to change my view point. A tip from an expert in dealing with bad map reading :-)...when in doubt, take a minute, grab a quick cuppa if you can or have a bite of food or just sit down and close your eyes for acouple of minutes, it'll save you time in the long run. That I can promise you. Here is central Sweden we have lots of dense forest and very little ground or small rivers...no tricks work here only solid map reading skills. Thank you again for the great video mate and Happy Christmas and look forward to 2024 with The Map Reading Company.

I've been back packing for decades and know my way around with map and compass; however, I learned something from this video that I hadn't thought about before. Pacing. It's tough to do where I backpack because of the mountains and rocky outcroppings that can really mess with pacing (Smoky Mountains in North Carolina). But, smaller segments should work. I'll put it to the test this summer. Oh, and the bit about your mind lying to you? Spot on advice!

Another useful technique when you're headed for a linear object (stream, road, shoreline or whatever) is to aim for a deliberate miss. If it's a N-S road, aim so you will clearly hit it to the south of your intended target. Then when you get there you know that you'll need to turn left.

Great principles! Over 50 years ago my father taught me to always go downhill if I didn’t know which way to go…civilization is down. If you live in the mountains you understand the value of such a simple statement.

Great video. Thanks for braving the conditions to make it. I had to navigate a team through dense forestry commission land a good few years ago when we were doing an archaeological survey of land to be felled for a windfarm. It got very dark under the canopy there too. We had to walk transects to make sure we covered all the ground. Had to use the take a bearing onto a tree and walk to it method to do it accurately but it takes a huge amount of concentration to do that for 6-7 hours a day (was that the tree? No, this is the tree. Ha). We managed it though. Staying together in the dense areas was also a challenge. Definitely picked up a few extra techniques from your video that I could have used. Oh, one extra complication. We kept finding empty plastic bottles tied to trees that had a pencil, a note and a picture of a heavily tattooed guy with his top off (face obscured). The note said that he came up to this woodland to practice naked yoga and to leave your name if you were insterested in joining him! That added a tiny bit of fear to the whole proceedings! There are some strange people out there.

Hi, I'm doing a lot of forest navigation in a forest, to prepare for a course I'm doing later this year. I'm feeling confident and have walked checkpoints up to 3.5km, without using any tracks or roads and arriving pretty much on point, using my GPS to confirm my position. The techniques I implement are: - Walking on a bearing/Point to point - 'Up the guts' approach. - Aiming off - approximately 100-150m off target - terrain association - Checking for increases in elevation to confirm approximate location and direction. - Backstops - Using tracks and terrain features as a backstop to know if/when I have walked too far. The only doubt I have is that I don't use pace counting. In a forest, I have found: - my pace count to be wildly inaccurate and a waste of mental energy - Trying to following my compass bearing while counting my paces. - using the above techniques to be more effective in keeping me on track. My old orienteering club also didn't encourage pace counting due to its inaccuracy. Do you recommend I still practice it?

Thank you! A brilliant and very clear presentation of the realities and the practicalities of deep forest navigation. I spend a good amount of time in the backcountry of the Adirondack and the Catskill Mountains in Upstate New York and I am constantly dismayed by the number of hikers that I encounter who do not carry a compass or a map, instead relying entirely upon a smart phone or a GPS as their lone means of finding their way home.

I learned to use a compass strictly from youtube videos. I went out to the middle of the Adirondacks, marked a point on the map that interested me and practiced. my trick was downloading a map of the area on my phone before hand, and double checking my work against my GPS. after a few times it became relatively easy. the most important thing is getting out and doing!!!

I was fortunate enough to live in a very remote rainforest on the coast of Australia in the early 80s. I learned how to orient myself under a full canopy and know basically where I was when a kilometre into a dense canopied forest. But I was lucky. I learned that stuff from childhood. I can read a map and navigate with a compass in unfamiliar areas as you're describing.

Living in central Pennsylvania, USA, we have lots of forest, streams, and greatly varying topography... and few open vistas... unless you are on a ridge top! Your video is great for the navigating I am learning to do. One complaint I have about the maps I have available in Pennsylvania is that most of them do NOT have radio towers, water towers, and other highly visible manmade features marked!! So I use Google Earth to find them and add them to my maps BEFORE I go out and use those maps.

I've just started with compass and map navigation and find your videos very helpful and they're fun to watch too. I also love your "waffling". Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Hats off to you Sir, very well done and exactly the way I’ve been doing it for the past thirty years here in Northern New Mexico. I still love my paper maps and compass over electronics and a valuable trait too have. Keep training those willing to learn 👍🏻

Brilliant video and instruction. Learning how to use the direction of water flow in streams to reduct one’s location is quite helpful. Someday I hope to visit the UK. I imagine some bloke asking me how I know so much about the English country side and navigation, and I will turn to him, look him in the eye and state “Wayne’s House of Waffle”!

There's a lots of lessons those who listen. Thank you.

Where I live there are thousands of miles of forest in just about any direction you choose, so learning to read the land and navigate are very important. I did not realize the amazing quality of OS maps until I came here where the topo maps are no where near the same quality. my whole concept of scale had to change in these mountains. navigating in the brecons is much different than here in the rockies., great video nicely presented . as I always tell people that head out with me . I dont always know where I am but im never lost.

I've watched several of your videos now. All good info in short order. I appreciate it, and don't worry too much about waffling.

I've recently started exploring a very dense Pine woodland. After getting lost several times I've realised the best way to navigate is contour lines. There's nothing to take a bearing off as you can't see anything but the trees around you but easy to know if you're walking up or down! Thanks for the instructive video!

When you arrived at the hilltop I really was expecting your friend to be there with coffee and sandos! :)

Thanks for the instruction!

Excellent video! Thank you for making the effort to show real conditions. Your advice on believing the map is spot on.

Good to be reminded of what I had forgotten! Easy to follow with excellent graphics. Thanks again

Great video. Thank you for doing the hard yards to make this a real and informative video. I particularly liked the discussion pieces when going from or to certain objectives. I think it is really important to understand the strategy before moving off and then conforming that you have arrived at the point you intended to. The water courses of small streams can be affected by so many variables, logging, natural dam, heavy rainfall etc. This piece of the video was especially important and useful. Thank you.

Another top quality lesson. Thank you for your time , effort, technical ability - and wet feet.

Thank you, love your style and use of proper examples rather than best case scenarios. Also the audio was fine for me, the work you did to clean it up paid off. Even that later section where it was noticeably different was still completely comprehensible. 👍

Excellent lesson in terrain association! Your lesson is spot on!

Brilliant. Lots of logic (applied common sense) in these nav tips.

I really appreciate these kind of videos. Very helpful. Thank you and greetings from germany.

Nice video. Immediately made me recall my land navigation training in the army. Thanks!

great video! Thanks!

Excellent, thank you for sharing.

One thing that threw me was when I was struggling to locate the river I'd marked out on the map. Turned out the "river" was the one centimetre deep puddle I was standing in. Likewise, "footpaths" on maps are not always nicely formed paths but sometimes just inaccessible areas that aren't worth following. Lesson learned.

So happy i came across this, really well done my friend, thanks for doing this in the field. You were clear and entertaining, good stuff!

A well crafted presentation. Land navigation isn't about " tricks ", it's about learning to read maps and use a compass. As stated, practice in friendly environments, you will make mistakes until your skills improve. As with a majority of things in life, preparation and recognizing your limitations is key.

Thanks now I can hike anywhere and not worry about being lost

Your videos are always brilliant. Very helpful to your viewers. Keep up the great work.

Excellent video very instructive. Thank you!

Okay, okay, Mr. Map Reading, I came from a different school--time with traditional natives here in Canada. I have never used a compass, but once, and only to confirm the direction I believed to be true by looking at the tree roots, the branches (both for the weight on which side and also to see where they point). Do those "old ways" work? My proudest moment was finding the friends I was searching for at an encampment in an off-and-on snowstorm about 15 miles into "trackless" bush, ...at night!! Those observations do work. But, I tip my hat to you as you have shown a much easier way to navigate than mine (I call it "mine" as I have made it my way of looking at the woods). What you showed, quite simply, was a wonderfully easy way for anyone to find their way around the bush. I even learned something from your video that I will try next time out. I liked and I subscribed, keep it up!!

My wife and I went out for our usual woodlands walk we went every weekend we were so confident we knew the way we didn't bother taking a mobile phone or cumpass only this time we had a snow storm all the the paths got covered in snow and everything looked so different it took us ages before we found our way back to the car Alec from Scotland

Great video Good ol dead reckoning. A few tricks I know: pick an object as far in front of you as you can and walk straight towards it. Otherwise it's nigh impossible to know if you are going straight or not. Get a compass with tritium self luminous marking, you May think that you have no need of one because you don't plan to ever be navigating at night but some forrests get so dark that it can be 2:00 in the afternoon and impossible to read your compass If you are following our compass heading and encounter some sort of obstacle that blocks you from following it you can do what's called a 90° offset which is essentially taking a right turn going a little ways making another right turn going a little bit further and so on and so forth until you have made a box around the obstacle and we're back on your original heading

Fascinating subject and excellent presentation. I was giddy to hear that my intuition was spot on, at least this time. It brings back memories of being "lost" in the forest as a child.

This make good sense to me, thanks mate this is very useful..

Thanks. Wish I had seen this years ago when I was doing a lot of hiking inthe south African bush. Some techniques I worked out the hard way. Others passed me by. Must start hiking again, but the UK weather really puts me off.

Great video, thanks for uploading.

Very helpful! Thanks😊

Enjoyed this, thanks!

Missing audio aside, I had to give this episode a thumbs up. The good information I was able to glean makes it worthwhile. On a side note, the terrain and flora make it almost like my home the PNW of the U.S. Wet, thickly forested conifers interspersed with deciduous trees and shrubs. Great video.

7:50 Is it an advisable technique to, on purpose, aim besides the location you want to go? So for example instead of the ~60 degrees, you aim for ~70 degrees, so that you are fairly certain you end up on the south side of your intended location, and just follow the river northwards? I love the visualization of the map and compass versus the real world features. Its awesome. The examples are great, truly a hidden gem on youtube.

Thanks sir, I just learned to use a compass this week. Your video is timely, I am going to use this info to bushwhack 80 miles across the forest in eastern Maine. I’ll let you know how it goes. 😂

Extremely fun to watch and learn, will definitely be checking out your other videos. Thanks for taking the time to include the map on screen with the photoshop edits

Great looking studio. I have always thought even a rainy day outside is better than a day warm and dry at work. Thanks for this. I tend to get a bit turned around a bit in heavy forest.

Basic common sense map and compass navigation. Well done 👍

Very useful info. If it's a planted conifer forest there should be gaps left for harvesting equipment every few trees. And those gaps run in straight lines.

I greatly appreciate your teaching. Your delivery methods hold my interest and your content is spot on, at least it is for me. I have observed more than a few other teachers,and I fine I have learned more from you than any other. Thank you!

Liked, subd, shared. Thank you. Excellent tutorial

Great work. Thank you,.

Cool video! Thank you for taking the time to make this video.

Glad to see a video of what I live in

Thanks for keeping it real! Your instructions and demonstrations are invaluable for real-life navigation. A question: Don't natural features, like streams, change over time? How recent is your map and shouldn't that be an important consideration to avoid incremental changes of landmarks during this type of navigation?

Thank you for the tips

Thank you ever so much, another brilliantly executed description of navigating through a difficult environment. I'm really good at getting lost, which is unfortunate, because I walk a fair bit in the Cambrian Mountains, wherever there's forestey bits (my dogs love forestey bits:)).

Well done, solid content thanks!

Thank you!!

Some of this is great stuff. If i ever need to use it, thank you in advance.

Thank you so much for your most helpful video. I am learning navigation and have read a couple books. I know it takes a lot of experience to, so I need to practice a lot more.

Real world , terrific . Where I live we have wooded swamps and some terrain is floatant de marais . Love Your videos Sir .

Great video.... as you hinted, forrest navigation in the day is a good first step in what could be construed as great night navigation practice.

Amen. Always believe your compass. When navigating in the massive forest of the Pacific Northwest in the United States I have the compass on a shoestring around my neck. A compass it the last thing you want to lose.

And this is how I should have been doing it for the last 20 years. Being a nature photographer on the West Coast of New Zealands South Island, I spend a lot of time off track. I do study different layers in Google Earth first, then pretty much navigate by following ridgelines or streams.. I've only not been able to find my way back once, but, luckily I was on a stream with a waterfall and tourist walkway only about 3 and a half kilometres downstream. It was extremely dense rainforest though, and a couple of days after a cyclone, so trees down everywhere (which is how I got lost in the first place. Luckily, nothing wild will kill you here, just exposure or falling. I'm 65 now, and still in the forest a couple of times a week. You can see the type of forest in my videos.

Great video!

Love your content thankyou

Good morning, merry Christmas and Thanks for the video. It's appreciated. There's a patch of forest near me that resembles your Kielder Forest. minus the elevation changes. I'll occasionally pick a couple of points and try to navigate from one to the other and it's a real pain in the butt. Even now when there are no leaves on the trees I can only see for 50 or 60 yards. It's an awesome practice area, though. I'm not really looking forward to trying it next spring or summer though. Between the foliage, tics and mosquitos I may just give it a pass. Thanks again. I always enjoy and learn something from your videos'. Hope 2024 is good to you and yours.

Another great video. I really appreciate the time and effort you put into making these videos. 🌎

Very good video .. covers the basics well , in a very understandable way .. from a US Army wrecker driver who learned land navigation from artillery school .

As a city dweller you inspired me install the Compass app on my phone...small steps...

thanks for the information really enjoyed how it was taught

Oh my goodness. I would be lost. So interesting🇨🇦

Very usefull video!😊

9:10 made me have a good laugh hahahahaha excellent video! very impressed, in the first minute when you said the audio was bad due to the mic being waterlogged, I knew that instant I was going to get good advice. Feeling very informed! Thank you!

I also like those kind of places!

Excellent video. All best practices. Remember, waypoint are critical. I do not know if you cover them in a different discussion. In your scenario, I planned a 100 deg heading, expecting a waypoint at 1st stream. If not encountered in expected time, deduce an actual heading in excess of 100. Terrain, individual characteristics or confirmation bias brought me caused deviation to right. In any case, continue 100 deg bearing. Encountered waypoint excellent reference point if retrace required due to distraction from route (mishap, animal encounter, excessive weather event).

Great service you provide, merry crimbo.

Excellent video, I did my MLC assessment years ago and the night nav started in a forest. It was a nightmare as the forestry commission let foot paths overgrow and make new ones where it suits them and also cut down small and large areas of woodland. Out of all the assessment for navigation I recon in the trees is the hardest ..I now always carry a GPS not for the maps but for the ability of getting an accurate GR...

10:00 my plan before watching the rest of the video: go east until you reach the creek, then go up south, which is up hill, so that you can get to the other side of the creek. the creek will eventually head east, then southeast, then northeast. when it heads northeast you're almost there, but i don't know exactly how to navigate from there.

enjoyed your video!

Spot on. I would go as far as to say there are no real tips and tricks to navigation as it is an acquired skill that requires lots and lots of practice. The tips and tricks only come into play when you are totally lost with no map nor compass.

I noticed that you never used the terms "true right, true left" when dealing with streams and rivers. As I know, you will know, that this can be confusing when giving instructions to SAR or a friend who is going to meet you at the stream or river. True right and true left are taken by looking down stream. (the water flowing away from you). Not all streams are narrow and in dense bush it can be hard to see anyone on the other side. you may have pointed this out in some of your other videos. Enjoyed your video and your 'down to earth' clear instructions. ATB Cheers from the mountains of NZ ☺☺

This is so entertaining and educational at the same time. I really like the channel. Dankeschön from Germany !

Thank you sir